Archive for the 'Tips and Tricks' Category

When buying a course or looking for tips, it’s easier for the provider if you know which version of Microsoft Office you’re using. This guide will show you how to identify this on either Windows or Mac.

When using Windows

Open any of your Office applications (Word or Excel) and create a new document.

Choose File in the top left corner, and then select either Account or Help from the list on the left.

Under Product Information, you’ll see your Office product name and, in some cases, the full version number.

If the full version number doesn’t appear here, choose About Excel. A dialog box opens, showing the full version number and bit version (32- or 64-bit) at the top.

1 – Product name, such as Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 or Office Home and Student 2016

2 – Full version number, which starts with 15 for Office 2013 or 16 for Office 2016.

On Mac

Open any of your Office applications (E.g. Word or Excel) and create a new document.

Go to the Excel menu and choose About Excel.

In the dialog box that opens, the version number appears in the middle (Office for Mac 2016) or in the top left (Office for Mac 2011).

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Most people will blame the presentation, not the presenter, which is the first thing you can avoid: Pre-made slide templates. There are plenty of these templates that come with PowerPoint, with even more online, some for free and some for a price. The best thing you can do is to start with a blank presentation. Create your own presentation from scratch, personalise it and show off your style. A presentation that is adapted to the presenter is better than a presenter that adapts to a presentation.

Skip to the point

When listing a few items or objectives, many users might fall for the bullet point trap! During a presentation bullet points can take focus away from the presenter. However when you list each point one at a time with spaces and a row each it makes the point seem more clear and connected. This is improved more when you place the list next to an image or a graph that is meant to be the real focus.

There are several ways you can future proof your code in Visual Basic. By using the Macro Dialogue Box in Excel (as well as Word) you can make sure your colleagues can understand the purpose and general use of the Macro you record or write. To use the Macro Dialogue Box to is advantage. Here the best ways on how to do so:

Give your macro a user friendly name.

Always give your macros a user-friendly name, or agree a naming procedure for your Macros so that everyone knows what they are for. This may seem a bit like stating the obvious, but if your Macro is there to format a table, then give it a name that would summarize what it formats and keep it memorable and concise. Naming a Macro No.14 isn’t really going yourself or others any favors when debugging any problems.

Add the shift button to any key short cuts.

Always add the Shift button to any key shortcuts. A CTRL+Key shortcut will disable its MS predefined purpose, so If you add CTRL+C shortcut to your macro and run it, you will not be able to use that short key to copy text or cells.

Use the description box to explain the Macro.

Always use the description box to add as much info about the Macro as possible and dates when it was edited. This way you can always know what went wrong and when and by who, not to point blame but to understand what happened and minimize time spent on investigating the problem.

Use comments when you write a code.

Commenting can also be very handy when writing new code, recycling code or adding more details to your existing code to help others understand the purpose of your code.

Adding a comment is fairly easy. Go to your line of code and add an apostrophe (‘) in front of it. Anything on that line will turn green indicating that VBA is not recognizing it as a line of code, but seeing it a comment or note.

Always use commenting creatively to lines of code you are unsure of, as well as adding notes to your code for people to see what that block of code is meant to do. You could also use the apostrophe to debug the code if it is not working correctly or clashing with another line of coding. Or instead of deleting code, you can use commenting to leave the code where it is and come back to it at a later stage.

Recording Macros is brilliant! Especially if you are not sure on how to word something initially. If you can’t decide what to use in your code, try recording macros that similar to what you are trying to do and see what is entailed in the code. The obvious next step would be to remove any unwanted or redundant code.

The first step is record a Macro. The best way to do this is click the Record Macro Button which is found on the Status Bar (the green bar at the bottom of your excel sheet).

Then, the Record Macro Dialogue box appears.

Be sure to fill out the Name and Description boxes with as much details as you can to future proof your Macro, as per below.

Click OK. Now you will have to format the table as you would normally in Excel. Excel will record your steps as a Macro. Click the Record Macro button again to stop recording.

Next would be to view the Macros. To do this, Find the View Tab on the Ribbon, go to the Macro command group, and select View Macros.

Click on the Edit button and this will bring up your Macro in Visual Basic. If you look at the screen grab below, you will see a simple Macro for selecting a range of cells and formatting it with bold, italic and adding a background colour.

This should now give you an idea of the sentencing required to create a macro that grabs a group cells, formats it and adds background colour. Now all you have to do is use your VB know how and adapt the code to something more practical and universal that applies to all cells. Just remember to remove any redundant lines (for example .tintandShade = 0 isn’t needed so you can delete it).

Once your happy with your Macro, then add the code you think will work best (like looping or IF statements). By using this simple way of recording Macros and then editing them to your needs you can save yourself a huge amount of time writing code from scratch.

If found this hint and tip useful, you can always check out our Recycle Code tip for more ideas.

Outlook is a great tool for not just sending and receiving emails, but for also incorporating your day-to-day happenings in the office. Calendar tools can help with setting meetings, appointments and plan your day.

To set up a meeting in Outlook, go to the Home tab on the Ribbon, select New Items and then select Meeting.

Once you do that, you will get the New Meeting Dialogue Box.

It is easy to invite people to a meeting by using the ‘To‘ box and adding a subject in the ‘Subject Box’. You can also schedule a time and date by adding them into the ‘Start/End Time’ box as shown in the picture above. It is also possible to schedule a meeting for the entire day, simple click the ‘All Day Event‘ button.

Fancy learning more about how Outlook can benefit your business? Then have a look at our Outlook courses.

If you want to create a poster or letter document in Microsoft word, then it could be useful to use the Header option, to give your document a professional look. The header feature allows the user to add smart looking areas in the top, bottom and side margins of a document.

Why is using a header or footer useful? well many online forums would suggest that when sending a document with a header, employers see a strong level of professionalism and that it shows that you have a good knowledge of using Microsoft word.

To use this feature, simply click the Insert Tab, and then in the Header and Footer group, Select either a header of footer.

From the Drop Down Menu below the Header option, Select which Design you would like.

Once you have selected the Design Template then you can Customise it to how you like. To customise the header, select the Edit Header option shown at the bottom of the picture above. The customise steps are simple and easy to follow and it will give you the freedom to design exactly how you would like the header to look.

Have you ever been sat in a lecture trying to write notes fast enough and listen to the speaker? Well maybe you didn’t know about this brilliant Recording Feature on Microsoft OneNote.

OneNote offers an option to create Visual and Audio notes through a recording feature that is situated upon the Top Button Tab like shown below.

This feature helps you to make quick notes on the go, just by simply recording in vocal mode. If you have a little more time then it could be useful to record in video mode, both visual and audio notes can be shared with your colleagues and contacts through OneDrive.

All you have to do is click the recording icon and it will automatically start recording, however if you record in visual mode then you may have to accept permission to access the webcam. When you would like to stop recording, there is a large Stop button next to the icon.

So, if your ever in a lecture and don’t want to loose any important facts or information then don’t forget to try out this recording feature.

We hope you found this tip helpful, Check out our other OneNote Courses

A great feature in Microsoft PowerPoint is the ability to design your own theme and layout. It allows the user to freely design their slides and deliver quality presentations that are suited to their business style.

To create your own personalized theme, simply open a new blank presentation and click on the View Tab. Now in the Master Views Group, select Slide Master.

The Slide Master is the largest picture out of all the others in the slide thumbnail drop down. Other slide layouts are situated underneath the slide master.

To allocate changes to the slide master/slide layouts, select the Slide Master tab, and try the following:

Try a colorful theme and add special fonts and effects, or click Themes, and choose a theme from the gallery. Use the scroll-bar on the right to see more themes.

To change the background, select Background Styles, and choose a background from the drop down menu.

To add a placeholder (add’s text, pictures, chart, videos, sound, and other objects), select the Insert Placeholder option in the tool bar , now select the option you would like to add into the slide.

We hope you found this tip helpful. For any other tips on PowerPoint, Check out our PowerPoint Tips

If you are new to Visual Basic, and want to start writing Macros for various MS application (most popular are Word and Excel), there are several ways in which you can utilize VB code without the need to spend time writing it from scratch. As with anything code and software related, while following our tips remember to test, test and test again to eliminate any problems, errors and to ensure quality and code is not causing any further problems or clashes when applied.

This is the No.1 tip I give whenever I conduct one of our Visual Basic Courses for Excel. Use code that has been written before and adapt it to your own uses. Google is great for such things, but you may spend a bit of time looking for the right code or website.

I always suggest checking out the Microsoft Developers Network (MSDN.com) for ideas on code when conducting of one our VBA courses (MSDN). You can always use their forums or Facebook and Twitter pages for a few hints and tips and exchanging code. You can also use the MSDN’s extensive knowledge base, documentation and help pages on a variety of VB related stuff as well as further your own knowledge. A brilliant tool for developers and programmers at any stage of experience.

Office 365 Sites are a good way of creating social pages for your business and creating spaces where various departments can share, interact and store information that only they can access. So here is how to create one.

To create a Site, Log on to your Office 365 account and if you are an administrator, find the Admin Tab.

Under Admin, Click on SharePoint and under site collection a new Ribbon will appear.

Click on New then Private Site Collection as per picture below and a pop up Site Wizard window will appear, fill out all the spaces. You will need to give your site a unique name. I would consider naming by Department or Function of the site to make it easy to find.

Add a person as a Administrator to help control what happens on the site and allow for a person to be responsible for adding documents, other employees….etc to the site.

Once you have created your Site, it will look something similar to this:

Sites can be very useful especially if certain individuals are constantly moving or traveling, or want to access certain documents and contact other individuals without the need to access files remotely. Like much of Office 365, Sites can also be accessed via a tablet, smart phone or ay hand held device with Internet connectivity.

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